


We All Fall Down

by rm (arem)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Community: writerinadrawer, WriterInADrawer 4.10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-26
Updated: 2010-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arem/pseuds/rm





	We All Fall Down

As a child, Jack thinks _peninsula_ means someplace barely connected to the world because it takes three days to get anywhere useful from his house.

Each summer for twenty-seven days there is a meteor shower that forces all the crafts coming into their colony world to use a different flight path, and they swoop and buzz and burn across the overheated and usually desolate skies of his peninsula.

It is too hot to go outside much and Jack must watch those crafts through a cracked skylight as he lays in a strip of filtered sun in the main room of his house. Despite this, it is, in all the days of his childhood he can remember, his favorite time of year.

When he is eight, he sees one of the crafts explode over the sea.

*

"You must hate this," Ianto says.

He and Jack and Gwen are sitting on the floor of the Delhi airport waiting for their now painfully delayed flight. It's 2:37am and Gwen is trying not to stare at the way Jack effortlessly rolls rice and daal into a small ball with the pads of his fingers before popping it into his mouth.

Jack shrugs. "Travel's slow, you get used to it."

"But – "

Whatever point Gwen is going to make gets lost as she tries her own luck with their airport cart food, pinching the rice and lentils together, but as she brings it to her mouth, some of it gets loose and falls down her blouse instead.

Ianto looks down at his sushi and studiously doesn't say anything. He finds himself surprised when Jack doesn't either.

"Is this about spaceships?" Jack asks, almost coyly, because he knows that's what they mean by theorizing that a relatively minor delay at Indira Gandhi International Airport must somehow be beyond his ability to tolerate.

"Yes, Jack," Gwen says, uncrossing her legs and standing up to pull the fabric of her shirt away from her body and shake it out for a moment so that the stray rice falls to the floor. She plonks back down again. "Yes, this is absolutely about spaceships."

"Seriously?" he asks, looking from Gwen to Ianto.

Ianto nods.

"I should have gotten the sushi," Gwen says dejectedly.

Ianto points his chopsticks at her and clacks them together.

*

Jack leaps up to ring the bells; that's what you do when someone is in trouble, when there are problems with the boats, when someone might drown. He then grabs water and a white cloak and runs out onto the beach.

He can see the burning pieces of the craft way out on the sea.

*

"Why would travel get more efficient just because we learn to go farther?" Jack asks, pushing another bite of food into his mouth.

"Because, technology is supposed to _solve_ problems," Gwen says, sounding a little bit outraged, possibly because she's overtired.

"Right, but when does it actually make things less annoying as opposed to more annoying?"

"Porn," Ianto says succinctly.

Gwen stifles a laugh.

"Sorry, low filter. I'm used to sleep deprivation and abject terror, not sleep deprivation and numbing boredom."

Jack points at Ianto and looks at Gwen. "See, that? That's _just_ like spaceships," he says in an overly-dramatic and conspiratorial voice. "They're always late, there's little to do in a departure port and the food is never what you want. Although," he adds examining the daal, "this is pretty good."

"You are completely ruining the future for me, Jack, I hope you know that," Gwen says.

"Is this because we killed the Concorde?" Ianto asks.

"Huh?"

"Travel doesn't get faster – is it 'cause we killed the Concorde?"

"It blew up," Gwen says.

Jack sighs. "She was beautiful."

*

No one joins Jack on the beach until his father runs out onto the sand and grabs him, carrying him over his shoulder back into their house.

"There's burning in the sea," Jack says, as his father slides him off his shoulder.

"And blisters on your face," his father says sternly.

"But we're supposed to help! I rang bells! Why didn't everyone come?" Jack protests, trying to squirm away as his mother puts a salve on his cheeks.

"Because sometimes there's no help."

"But did you see it burn?" Jack asks urgently.

His father nods.

"We have to do something," he says, trying to get away again. This time, his mother grabs him sharply and drags him down into her lap.

"What would you do?" his father asks.

*

"Actually, it crashed," Ianto clarifies.

Gwen sighs. "Seriously, how do you tolerate this?"

"You try growing up three days from anything, and trust me, you'll learn to appreciate being stuck in an airport real fast," Jack says, weary suddenly of this whole misadventure and knowing some mess he can't even anticipate is surely waiting for them back in Cardiff.

For a moment, Gwen and Ianto pause, unmoving. While Jack tells them all sorts of stories about his future past on a fairly regular basis, they're just that, stories – maybe true, maybe not. But this is clearly, startlingly, a fact.

"What was it like, the first time you flew, sir?" Ianto asks softly, and Gwen thinks it doesn't sound like one question, but three.

*

"Everyone should come. We take the boats, floats, fresh water, med-packs," Jack says. It is simple and obvious, the rules of rescue he's known since he was old enough to be anywhere other than his mother's arms.

"What about the sun?" his father asks, his tone reminding.

"Everyone knows to cover up."

"It takes longer," his father notes.

"And the people in the craft might not know to be covered," his mother adds.

"How long do you think it would take to get to them, the one that went down today?" his father asks.

Jack rolls his eyes slightly, unfocused on the room around him as he does calculations in his head. "Ten minutes, ten and a half?"

His father nods and Jack knows his math is right.

"So what would happen to them in that time?"

"If they weren't covered?" Jack asks, voice going smaller now.

"Yes, if they weren't covered," his mother says, squeezing him tight for a moment, not because he is about to squirm away, but because lessons hurt.

*

Jack smiles softly at the question, but doesn't look at Ianto or Gwen, but at his hands, as he speaks.

"We took a boat along the shore; the nearest ferry was four colony towns over; caught that, sailed overnight, got to a trade center, caught a transport to a proper city; grabbed a shuttle to the space port... yeah, I think that's right."

"But – "

"I was five. I don't remember it well."

"I meant, how could you be so far from things?" Gwen asks, horrified and awed.

"People took to the stars, because they wanted more space," Ianto says, answering for Jack because speaking is suddenly easier than thinking. He suspects that Jack has just revealed the total of what he will ever really tell either of them about his past. It feels like a loss.

"Listen to him," Jack says to Gwen. "Aren't you and Rhys always saying you'd like a house with a big yard?"

"I, for the record, do not want a house with a yard," Ianto notes.

*

Jack recites – it is a lesson like letters, like numbers, like the names of plants or planets, and of poetry learned.

"They may be injured from the crash, or what caused whatever happened that led to the crash. If the craft cracked open, they are exposed to water and to sun. They may not know how to swim or find salt-water more caustic than we do. They may be unconscious and drowning. If they are human or near-human, the sun here, these days, will burn them quickly; blisters will come in two minutes or less. If they are something else, maybe it won't be as bad, or maybe the sun will boil them like fish."

"So by the time we got out there, maybe injured ourselves, you tell me, what would be the point?" his father asks gently.

Jack grits his teeth and sticks out his chin. "Maybe they have hard shells and like the water and are not damaged by our sun. Maybe they were covered and not too badly hurt. Maybe their kind don't bury dead in the water like we do."

Jack's parents look at each other over the boy's shoulder and know, maybe for the first time, that he will always be one who wants to go to war.

*

"No one to mow the lawn?" Gwen teases.

Ianto nods. "Yup."

"Janet could do it," Jack says absently.

Ianto groans. "Oh god, I hope those feeding timers worked."

"Hers is a resourceful species," Jack intones.

"I always wonder where they get the boiler suits," Gwen says absently.

"Jack," Ianto says.

"Mmmmmm?"

"You never answered the question."

Jack tilts his head back and laughs, then looks at Ianto and winks. "When do I ever?"

*

When his parents say nothing in response, Jack asks if he is wrong.

"Yes. And no," his father says, crouching down in front of him.

"Everyone needs to understand their life before they can decide to trade it for other people's," his mother says holding him close.

"I wasn't planning on dying!" Jack says in that way children always do because parents are sometimes fools.

His father curves his nearly too-large palm across the top of Jack's skull.

"No one ever does."

*

"I'm going to check the board again," Gwen declares, as she stands up and stretches.

"Bring us good news," Jack calls after her as she walks away.

She shrugs, but doesn't turn around.

Jack looks at Ianto, "I was really, really scared. And then my parents told me I wasn't allowed to be."

"And that was it?"

"That was it."

Ianto nods, as if to himself. "Thank you," he says. To his surprise, Jack replies.

"You're welcome."

*

"Some people must. Somewhere. I should like to meet them," Jack declares in the style of a boy adventurer in stories.

"You'll have to travel away very far from here, I'd think," his mother says.

"It's all right," Jack says, turning in his mother's arms to face her. "One day, I will go, and another day, I will come back and tell you about them."

*

When they finally board the plane for Schiphol, Ianto squeezes himself in against the window. He's not a small man, and it's clearly uncomfortable for him, but when Jack had suggested he book them each aisle seats for this trip, Ianto had refused, leaving the three of them all pressed up against each other again on the flight out to Delhi.

But Jack doesn't really mind. He's been charmed by Ianto's need to watch the clouds and Gwen's tendency to sleep with her head switching back and forth between resting on each of their shoulders, and he can stretch his own legs out into the aisle at least.

As the plane takes off, Jack notices Ianto burrow down in his seat, not, as he first assumes, to rest, but to look out the window. Ianto is gazing not down at the clouds that have so recently fascinated him, but up, into the dark, searching, it seems, for what else might be in the sky.


End file.
